DIOXIN--PART 1: DIOXINS AND CANCER: FRAUDULENT STUDIES.

For years, industry scientists have been claiming there's no
evidence that dioxins cause cancer in humans. Now there is
mounting evidence that such claims rely heavily on studies that
are fraudulent. Two companies recently accused of producing
fraudulent dioxin-and-health data are Monsanto and BASF.

Monsanto

A scientist with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says
Monsanto falsified data in important studies that Monsanto used
to support its claim that dioxin does not cause cancer in humans.
Dr. Cate Jenkins, a chemist in EPA's Office of Solid Waste and
Emergency Response, says EPA itself relied upon Monsanto's
fraudulent data in setting health standards for dioxin, and
Jenkins has asked the EPA's Science Advisory Board to reopen the
matter of EPA's dioxin standards, to take a fresh look at
available data.[1]

Two important sources of dioxins in the environment are old
chemical dumps and the incineration of municipal solid wastes,[2]
which is why EPA is concerned about allowable levels of human
exposures to dioxin.

BASF

The British technical journal, NEW SCIENTIST, says, "A new
analysis by a West German epidemiologist may have established the
first clearcut evidence of a direct link between exposure to
dioxins and cancer in humans. Friedemann Rohleder, an independent
specialist, has produced a report detailing an unexpectedly high
incidence of cancer among workers exposed to dioxins during an
industrial accident at a chemicals plant in 1953.[3]

"The plant, operated by the West German company BASF, made
trichlorophenol. Rohleder claims the company presented the data
in a way that disguised the cancers," says NEW SCIENTIST.

Background

Each of these claims of fraud relates to an industrial accident
in which workers were exposed to dioxins; follow-up medical
studies funded by the responsible companies have been published
in mainstream scientific journals, claiming to show that no
excess cancers have occurred in the dioxin-exposed workers. In
fact, excess cancers have occurred, but it appears that the data
have been manipulated to hide the facts.

The Monsanto Case

In 1949, an explosion occurred at a Monsanto chemical factory in
Nitro, West Virginia; as a result, many workers in the plant were
exposed to the herbicide 2,4,5-T, which was contaminated with
dioxin. (This herbicide was later the principal component of
Agent Orange, the chemical defoliant used by the U.S. in Viet
Nam.) In subsequent years, two Monsanto scientists, J.A. Zack and
R. W. Gaffey, studied the exposed workers, comparing their health
against the health of a similar group of workers who were not
exposed to dioxin or 2,4,5-T.[4]

According to court documents attached to the EPA memo,"Zack and
Gaffey deliberately and knowingly omitted 5 deaths from the
exposed group and took four workers who had been exposed and put
these workers in the unexposed group, serving, of course, to
decrease the death rate in the exposed group and increase the
death rate in the unexposed group."

Other studies of this same accident were also fraudulent,
according to the same court documents, including a study by R.R.
Suskind published in the JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL
ASSOCIATION:[5] "This published study of the workers exposed in
the 1949 accident reported only 14 cancers in the exposed group
and 6 in the unexposed group (a smaller cohort). However, the
medical records produced [by Monsanto] to the Plaintiffs
conclusively prove gross miscalculations and omissions... there
were 28 cancers in the group that had been exposed to dioxins in
1949 as opposed to only 2 cancers in the unexposed group." Mr.
Suskind published two other reports [6,7] on the same accident,
using his same data, to reach the conclusion that dioxin does not
cause cancer.

The BASF Case

On the night of November 17, 1953, a runaway chemical reaction
spewed dioxin-contaminated chemicals over workers and community
residents of two small German cities, Mannheim and Ludwigshafen.
Subsequently, an epidemiological study was used to deny workers
any compensation for ailments they claimed they suffered as a
result of exposure. In keeping with German law, the workers
retained their own expert to review the data. Their expert,
Friedemann Rohleder, received the data from the German government
but found, to his surprise, that all the data actually came from
the BASF company itself. He analyzed the data and found that some
workers suffering from chloracne, which is universally
acknowledged to be evidence of high exposure to dioxin, had been
placed in the low-exposure or non-exposed group. He found
evidence of "diluting" the exposed group with 20 plant
supervisory staff who, Rohleder believes, were not exposed. When
Rohleder omitted the 20 supervisory staff, his analysis revealed
statistically significant increases in two groups of cancers:
cancers of the respiratory organs (lungs, trachea, etc.), and
cancers of the digestive tract. "This analysis adds further
evidence to an association between dioxin exposure and human
malignancy," Rohleder told NEW SCIENTIST.